A large fraction of the population wears eyeglasses with corrective lenses to improve vision, and/or shaded sunglasses to ease eyestrain caused by intense brightness of the sun's rays. In fact, someone who does not own and use one or both of these types of eyewear is extremely rare in America today.
As anyone who wears eyeglasses or sun glasses knows, eyewear becomes dirty extremely rapidly. Troublesome material which can obscure vision through vision lenses come from a myriad of sources; human oil from face and hands, dirt from the hands, the splattering of food liquids during cooking and eating, particles of dust and pollen from the air etc.
Only a small amount of material, whether opaque, transparent or translucent, is sufficient to affect the light transmitting properties of an eyeglass or sun glass lens. It is well known that looking through dirty lenses causes eyestrain, and that prolonged eyestrain can cause weakened vision. Furthermore, vision is a crucial means of sensory input, and hampered vision can be a significant safety hazard.
Often, an eyeglasses wearer finds himself in a situation where it is inconvenient or impossible to clean his or he eyeglasses. For instance, at the beach, ocean spray and suntan oil rapidly accumulate on eyewear, hindering vision. Unfortunately, most articles of fabric become quickly impregnated with sand particles at the beach, and since such articles are then too abrasive to sue for cleaning vision lenses, the beachgoer is stuck with dirty lenses.
As another example, snow skiers commonly wear goggles to reduce the blinding brightness of reflections of the sun off the snow. It is crucial that snow skiers be able to clearly see the contours of the snow. But when a skier falls, the skier's goggles typically become covered with snow. Since ski clothing is water repellant it is practically impossible to remove the melted snow from t he lenses by rubbing them against the clothes.
It is in these situations, as well as many others, that a compact vision lens cleaning device would be extremely useful. Whereas other inventions have provided compact lens cleaning devices, these inventions are generally complicated and inelegant and require a number of steps, and considerable manual dexterity, to deploy, to use and to store the cleaning device.